Death Scourges

Just wrapped the game and I have some thoughts... For reference, I played the entire game on my Steam Deck OLED, low settings, no v-sync, capped frame rate via the decks performance profile and using lossless scaling to find an acceptable frame rate. I also turned off elements like the fog, motion blur, bloom etc. and the game still looked great on the handheld screen with the colours popping nicely. (Note that some visual settings like fog intensity, I expected to be in Video were actually in Accessibility - seems like something others seem to be missing in their comments.) Overall, I think it's a simple but enjoyable single player, squad shooter. I was initially drawn in by the art style and this remains one of the strongest aspects for me. As a big fan of games like Deep Rock Galactic, the blocky/polygonal character models just have a unique charm to them and the overall tone/atmosphere matches well. I think presentation is definitely one of the main highlights of the package. I was a little underwhelmed by the overall length of the game (my overall playtime is coming to 3.9 hours for a full playthrough though I have seen others note they completed it in half the time). People can argue about time vs money - personally I'm happy to spend £12 at the time of purchase to see small devs get the chance to make a living and continue their passions but your view may vary. Something to consider if you're weighing up other titles and wanting a large investment of time with it. Unfortunately, I think the combat and inventory management are the weakest parts and its a shame because this will be what you are dealing with for the majority of the time playing. I maintain the notion that the enemies are too tanky, I played on regular difficulty and it's just not fun to sink 4 shotgun shells into a zombie and still see them get up/advancing. Considering that your 3 man team is also shooting off rounds like crazy, the fact firefights go on as long as they do just doesn't mesh well with the idea of being this cool, gritty clean up crew. As it currently stands I don't think guns can be upgraded (new ones can be crafted), so if I can't make weapons stronger on repeat playthroughs then I would urge the dev to reconsider the damage model/health pools. Recoil also feels insane for some of the weapons even when in controlled bursts, if I'm meant to be this elite operative I think I should be able to control my shots a bit better. Alongside this, I think the item economy is too restrictive. Inventory space can't be expanded and the 9 spaces you have does not allow you to carry much in terms of ammo reserves plus the crafting items that take up an entire slot and do not allow for stacking. Ammo needs to auto stack on pickup as well, removing an item to pick up ammo, manually drag to stack it and then pick up the item I dropped got tedious. Fast. Also, I found the breakable boxes to regularly offer items I didn't need/already had or even contain nothing (which is just infruiating) - At one point I had a 30 minute window where I was on danger health and could not for the life of me obtain a healing item resulting in 10 or so deaths in a row as I just waited for item boxes to drop a med stim. Ammo crates feel unbalanced in that they restock my entire teams full supply but I have to chose to get ONE box of ammo for EITHER of my guns, not even one of each?! Wouldn't be as bad if you could store ammo for guns you aren't using in the fabricators and then stock up at the next one if you have run out/decide to change up the weapon choice. Finally, enemies seem to spawn at random rather than for specific set pieces like entering a new zone, completing an objective etc. I'd reload a save and get ambushed in an area I thought was safe whilst managing my inventory and then the next time I'd be fine. I get keeping you on your toes but if I'm in menus, as you are so much in the games current state, it'd be nice to know I'm not going to get jumped at random. I know it looks like I'm coming across with zero positives but I will say I still had fun with Death Scourges, I think there is a lot to be learned and implemented/taken on board for the next project(?). Given the clear Resident Evil influence, and having just played through Re5 for the first time, in that game I felt the power fantasy of being a cool agent and never felt like I was unfairly out of supplies or out matched in combat. If some of these issues are eventually addressed in a patch I'd definitely consider a reinstall and go through another play through on a higher difficulty because I do genuinely think there is a great little zombie shooter in this package, it just needs some further tweaking to fully realise it.